TV station Russia Today taking legal action after its journalist was
threatened with sexual violence by a prominent Russian politician

By Zachary Davies Boren

11:34AM BST 21 Apr 2014

A Russian politician appeared to threaten a pregnant journalist with "violent rape" at a press conference after she asked him about sanctions against Ukraine.

Stella Dubovitskaya, a reporter with the state-funded TV channel Russia Today, asked Vladmir Zhirinovsky, leader of the pro-Kremlin nationalist party LDPR, if Russia would respond with sanctions to a recent Ukranian restriction on Russian men entering the country.

Mr Zhirinovsky unleashed a tirade, which included threats of sexual violence. “You are all bloodthirsty,” he responded, "You women of the Maidan all have uterine frenzy."

The politician is then seen turning to his aides and saying: "When I say, you run to her and violently rape her."

He then pushed the two towards the journalist, who is six months pregnant, yelling: "Go and kiss her. Grab her."

RT general director Margareta Simonyan told the Daily Mail the news agency will take legal action: "Due to the disgusting incident in the state duma, after which our correspondent was hospitalised because of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s discourtesy, we have decided to use all legal options to punish Mr Zhirinovsky as severely as possible under the law, including by suing him."

RT editor Dmitry Gornostayev told euronews: “Many people have already become used to his extraordinary behaviour but when he allowed himself to openly call for violence within the walls of State Duma all journalists of our agency and colleagues from other media organisations were outraged."

Mr Zhirinovsky has since apologised, saying in a live television interview: "When talking to the press in the Duma on Friday, answering questions at the end, I spoke a bit rudely when I replied to a young woman.

"I offer my apologies to her and to everyone, if I happened to offend someone."